Girl Unknown(59)

‘What about a campfire?’ David asked.

‘Is that allowed?’ I asked, thinking of gorse fires spreading rapidly over the county.

‘Don’t be such a wimp,’ he said, teasing me.

Robbie was eager to help and they set off in search of firewood, with Zo?. Holly clambered up over the hill to explore and I was left alone.

For a while, I just sat there, kneading warmth back into my fingers. The others had disappeared. It was very quiet and the rock beneath me felt hard and cold. Clouds scudded across the grey sky, and the outline of the trees along the horizon was jagged and harsh. I wanted the others to come back and break the silence, which seemed vast and watchful, like a presence. But no one was there – only the rocks and thicket growing over the windblown hill.

Impatient, I decided to set off after Holly, up over the hump of gorse, the scrabble of a rutted mud path. It was hard going and I was beginning to sweat under my clothes, my legs tired from the strain of the climb. A copse of trees lay ahead, the ground between thick with nettles and briars. I scaled the perimeter until I rounded the corner and found myself almost at the brink of a sheer drop into a quarry, yellow machinery far below lying idle and unmanned. I peered over the edge, birds wheeling above, and felt my heart pound at the plunging depth. It must have been a drop of ten metres or more. My fear was chased by indignation – how dangerous! No fencing, no warning signs – if you were to stumble up there in poor light or a heavy fog, you could easily fall to your death.

I stepped back and looked to my left, my eyes caught by the bright colours of Holly’s anorak. Her feet were placed almost at the lip of the drop, wind whipping her hair out from her hood as she peered over. She hadn’t seen me, her body inclined slightly away from me.

That was when I saw Zo? edging through the periphery of my vision. She seemed to be stepping carefully, stealthily. Her jacket was grey, camouflage against the craggy stones of the quarry. A wave of nausea came up suddenly from my stomach and I opened my mouth to shout a warning but fear gripped my throat and no sound came out. I watched her creeping up, Holly oblivious to the approaching threat. I watched as she put out a hand, and all the danger in the world seemed to come alive in that moment. Maternal empathy meant that I saw the push before it happened, felt the hands as if they were to my own back, the sickening shove, the terrifying moment as the ground falls away and there’s nothing but the air around you and the bone-breaking impact of the ground – no escape. I watched that hand reach out, and forced the word up the blind tunnel of my throat: ‘No!’

A shot to my heart, Holly turning, my eyes all the while fixed on Zo?’s hand as it gripped Holly’s shoulder and pulled her back.

Even now, after everything that has happened, and with all I know, I still look back to that moment with uncertainty. If I hadn’t followed Holly up there and shouted out, would Zo? have pushed her? Or was that my feverish imagination, powered and warped by my intense distrust of the girl? But that is the rational thought of hindsight again. For at that moment it was pure instinct. I had seen the violence Zo? had done to herself; I had recognized her ruthlessness in getting what she wanted. The truth is, I was afraid of her.

Holly stepped back from the edge, came towards me and I wrapped my arm around her, shooting Zo? a look.

‘What?’ Zo? shouted after us, because I had already turned away, ushering Holly down the hill, away from her half-sister and the danger she represented. ‘I was just trying to help her!’

That night, going up the stairs to bed, I passed Holly’s door and heard crying. I found her lying in the darkness, hugging a tatty old bunny that had been consigned to the bottom of her wardrobe for the last couple of years. Seeing her clutching it to her chest – an old talisman against night-terrors – set off an alarm bell in my head. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’ I asked, sitting on the bed next to her, my weight on the mattress drawing her towards me.

‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, reaching up and throwing her arms around my neck.

That physical demonstration was so unlike Holly. She was normally self-contained, eschewing outpourings of affection. I could feel her thin body against me, shaking.

‘I was so scared,’ she whispered, her mouth close to my ear.

I knew she was talking about Zo? and something hardened inside me – a resolve forming. ‘It’s all right,’ I told her gently, trying to sound calm and firm. Drawing back so I could look into her eyes, I said: ‘I would never let anyone hurt you – you know that, don’t you?’

‘But you’re not always there, Mum. You don’t see what she’s like – the things she says to me …’

‘What things?’

‘When there are other people around, she’s nice and sweet to me, but it’s all an act! When we’re alone, just the two of us, she’s horrible!’

‘Why? What does she say to you?’

‘She says I’m nothing.’

‘What?’

‘That I don’t matter. That no one will miss me when I’m not around.’

‘Holly, that’s not true. You know it’s not.’

‘Dad wouldn’t notice,’ she said, her voice dropping a little.

‘Of course he would! Your father loves you and Robbie more than anything.’

‘More than Zo??’ Her eyes, still wet with tears, held mine.